Newbie Radeon 9700 questions

[Chris]

Hi,

This is my first ATI card, so kindly bear with me.

I bought a PowerColor Radeon 9700 Gold (non-pro) today. I did not install
the disk drivers, but installed the Catalyst 3.5 drivers (and Control Panel)
instead. What seems odd to me is that the card is shown everywhere (Display
Properties, games etc) as a "Radeon 9700 Pro", while it is NOT the Pro
version. According to PowerStrip the card runs at: Clock 275 / Memory 270.
That's the specs of the non-pro. In PowerStrip (v3.30) I could use the
sliders to (seemingly) overclock the card, but it made no framerate
difference in UT2003.

Questions please:
(1) Why is the card identified as a 9700 Pro?
(2) Does adjustment of the sliders in PowerStrip actually overclock the
card? The settings revert to default on a reboot, and as I said, there seems
to be no apparent speed increase.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks a lot
Chris.

 

[Chris]

Sorry, forgot my system details:

Athlon XP 2600 on Asus A7N8X Deluxe (nForce2)
PowerColor Radeon 9700
Audigy1
1 Gig DDR400
WinXP Pro (SP1)

 

[aj]

Athlon XP 2600 on Asus A7N8X Deluxe (nForce2)

PowerColor Radeon 9700
Audigy1
1 Gig DDR400
WinXP Pro (SP1)

With my 9700 Pro PowerStrip and Rage3d Tweek did not work
I try the Catalyst 3.4 and the 3.5.
I think the reason is that I found on Rage3D Site :

With the latest Catylyst drivers from ATI, their display properties control
panel resides in memory after the first run, and it never reads in the
registry values again. Howver, changes made in the ATI panels should be
reflected in the tweaker.


Only RadClocker RadLinker work.
There are very good

AJ

 

[Chris]

Thanks a lot for the info, but my actual point is the following.

I was wrong when I said there is no o/c speed increase. On default 275/270 I
get a 3Dmark03 score of 4370, while if set to 300/290 in PowerStrip, the
score is 4696. This means that the card CAN overclock, while the standard
9700 CANNOT be overclocked. My point is that if it can overclock, it must
have been modified somewhere along the distribution line, for PowerColor
does not supply them like that. It was, frankly, NOT in a sealed box when I
received it. The card works just fine, but it's just not right selling me a
used and modified card.

Will someone who knows the 9700 please indicate if my reasoning is correct?
Why else would it be overclockable right out of the box?

Thanks
Chris.

 

[nikon]

The only difference between a 9700 Pro and a Non-Pro is the clock speed...
To the best of my knowledge my Sapphire 9700 non-pro was always identified
as a "Pro" or a "9700 Series" by the drivers, regardless of the speed that
it was running at. It also came out of the factory flashed with an unlocked
bios...

I haven't had any problems with it and the card does 370/330 with Zalman
heatsink.

 

[Chris]

Thanks a lot Nikon, that settles the issue for me. Appreciated.

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